Kehde: Wiper bonanza arrives

To partake in these doings, wiper aficionados are journeying westward to Milford Lake and eastward to Truman Lake in Missouri to pursue one of the Heartland's most electrifying fish.

The wiper is a member of the temperate bass family. It is also a hybrid, and it is procreated in hatcheries by mixing the milt and eggs of white bass and striped bass.

After they are artificially propagated, they are stocked in various waterways. For example, the fisheries section of Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks stocked 1,738,707 wipers into Milford in 2003.

The first wiper stocking in Kansas occurred in 1977 at Marion Lake.

The name wiper was derived by combining the "w" from white bass and to the "iper" of the striped bass. It is also called a palmetto bass, hybrid bass or Morone hybrid.

Their life span is longer than the white bass and shorter than a striped bass. Biologists estimated that wipers live about eight years.

The Kansas state record wiper was caught below the dam at Pomona Lake on June 28, 1993, by Kevin Carson of Osage City. It weighed 22 pounds, and folks speculated the fish migrated out of Truman Lake during the great flood of 1993.

In the minds of experts, Milford and Truman contain the finest population of big wipers in the region.

Across eastern Kansas, wipers also abide in Coffey, La Cygne and Pomona, as well as Lake Shawnee and various state and community fishing lakes.

According to Roger Kehde, a veteran wiper angler from Sedalia, Mo., Truman's wiper fishing reached Wagnerian crescendo on May 18.

That was the day he caught and released 16 wipers during a short outing. The smallest weighed 5 pounds, and his largest weighed 15 pounds.

Kehde said successful wiper fishing at Truman in May and June revolves around water released through Truman Dam.

As water is released, a current courses across numerous underwater coverts, and the wipers assemble around some of those coverts to forage upon gizzard shad.

When the current doesn't flow, the wiper fishing is difficult. But when it flows, as it did on May 18, wipers are relatively easy to find and catch.

Kehde caught them by casting and slowly hopping a three-quarter ounce spoon made by Bill Ward of Warsaw, Mo.

He hopped and dragged the spoon across a flat, which was graced with current and littered with large boulders, and he worked the spoon up a dropoff from 40 feet of water into about 10 of water.

At Milford, wiper anglers are rarely confounded by current flows. But lately they have been beleaguered incessantly by the wind, which has prevented them from plying several of the best offshore wiper lairs for days on end during May.

Nevertheless, Vic Oertle of Manhattan says big wipers can be caught whenever the wind slackens for an hour or two -- especially around sunset.

To Oertle's delight, the wind waned a touch during the middle of the day on May 20, and he caught and released a 9-pound wiper.

To allure the wiper, Oertle, proprietor of Fishtech Lures and maker of the Double W Shad Flutter Spoon, wielded a three-quarter ounce spoon in 27 feet of water on a main-lake hump.

A couple weeks before Oertle tangled with that 9-pounder, another angler caught a 16-pounder from the same main-lake hump using live bait.

When pursuing Milford's wipers, Oertle never uses live bait. He always wields one of his three-quarter ounce Double W Flutter Spoons and tangles with an impressive array of hefty wipers.

But Mike Flynn, a consummate wiper angler from rural Topeka, contends big, healthy live gizzard shad impaled on a 8/0 circle hook will catch more and bigger wipers from June 15 through much of August than a spoon.

Likewise at Truman, Kehde notes the shad scenario comes forcefully into play in June and lasts until nearly Labor Day. Like Oertle at Milford, Kehde wields a spoon all summer for wipers at Truman, and in summer's past he has caught and released several 17-pounders.

Ned Kehde is a freelance writer based in Lawrence. He can be reached at nkehde@ku.edu.